Archives for November 2006

French actor Philippe Noiret dies aged 76

While most people outside of Europe won’t recognize the name, Philippe Noiret was a wonderful actor, and even if they don’t remember his name they might remember his performance as Alfredo the movie projectionist in Cinema Paradiso.

I cry at movies. My second-favorite movie is a real tearjerker and I’ve watched it repeatedly, which causes other family members to ask why do I torment myself – it’s not a pretty sight (no one looks good crying, unless they’re in a movie). Cinema Paradiso is not my most favorite movie but it is an excellent film.

I saw Cinema Paradiso with my friend G. when it first came out in 1988 .

G. really got crying early on in the film. I remained cool, with the sad story about Salvatore the poor little kid and the kindly Alfredo rolling right along, until the part where Alfredo projects the movie on the walls by the town square. That really caught my attention. The scene where Salvatore puts together all the censored love scenes that Alfredo had saved got me into a torrent of tears – to this day my eyes water if I hear the love theme music that played during that scene.

Of course this was cause for much hilarity from my friend’s then-teenage son, who had come with us to what his father referred to as “those weird foreign movies G. and Fausta are so fond of” because his game got rained out.

Noiret was also known in the USA for his part as Pablo Neruda in The Postman (a.k.a. Il Postino, NOT to be confused with the Kevin Costner yawner).

Noiret was just fabulous in that he never acted, he did.
Here are a few of his fims, which are also available from Netflix.

A Beautiful Actor

(technorati tags Philippe Noiret movies film)
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Via Maria,

Spy’s death-bed Putin accusation

Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of involvement in his death, in a statement dictated before he died.
. . .
Mr Litvinenko had recently been investigating the murder of his friend, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another critic of the Putin government.

According to The Australian,

ALEXANDER Litvinenko and the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya met in London soon after she had survived an attempt to poison her.
Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in Moscow last month, spoke to Mr Litvinenko during a visit to Britain last year, her son Ilya said yesterday.

BBC news

Russian dissident Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB colonel and friend of Mr Litvinenko, maintained that the poisoning had been the work of the Russians.

Putin, of course, denies any part in this, but,

On the day he first felt ill, Litvinenko said he had two meetings, the first with an unnamed Russian and Andrei Lugovoy, an-KGB colleague and bodyguard to former Russian Prime Minster Yegor Gaidar.

Later, he dined with Italian security expert Mario Scaramella to discuss the October murder of Politkovskaya.

Scaramella said he showed Litvinenko an e-mail he received from a source identifying Politkovskaya’s killers, and naming other targets, including Litvinenko and himself.

Here’s the BBC’s timeline of the case.

The BBC also mentioned this morning that Russia passed a law this summer making it legal to kill enemies of the state.

Don’t expect much uproar: As Edward Lucas points out,

Not that western censure presents any problem for Putin. The U.S. has humiliatingly abandoned any attempt to put Russia under pressure, in exchange for Kremlin help in influencing North Korea and Iran. France, Italy and Germany are worried only about gas, not freedom.

And then there’s this:

There are tantalising clues to the reach of the Kremlin’s tentacles across the globe from mysterious, expertly-produced disinformation websites that subtly push the Kremlin line and cases such as that of the Venezuelan drug smugglers who were found to have Russian technicians building a submarine for them.

The sovs are back, Ortega’s back in Nicaragua, Iran’s making rude noises, miniskirts and platform shoes are in the stores, and James Bond and Rocky are hitting the movie screens.

Everything old is new again.

Update Litvinenko Killed By Plutonium 210
Russia delivers air defense missile system to Iran (h/t LGF)

Update, Saturday Nov. 25 Via Maria,
The ex-spy’s final defiant message
THe UK’s Daily Mail is asking, How many more were poisoned? As I understand it, in order to get polonium 210 you basically have to have a nuclear reactor. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but whoever carried and administered a dose so high that it contaminated the places where Litvinenco visited that day must have gone on a suicide mission. Litvenenko died an agonizing death all the same.
Putin, however, says,

‘As far as I understand from the medical statement, it does not say this was the result of violence, this was not a violent death.’

I guess Vlad’s idea of a violent death excludes poisoning?

Spy death: Russian Lawmakers blame tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

(technorati tags Russia Politics Alexander Litvinenko)

Freedom from want:

Freedom of worship:

Freedon of speech:

Freedom from fear:

That’s why I live in this country,
and for that I thank God very day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(PS Pajamas Media has more on the Four Freedoms)

I was just listening to two podcasts,
This week’s Blography with Brian Stelter,
and
The Sanity Squad: Thanksgiving Edition – the Sanity Squad is addictive.

I spent part of the morning looking for a small turkey. A small turkey is like a small aircraft carrier: it doesn’t exist.

Later in the afternoon I went to a different store and found a 5lb turkey breast, and prepped it for tomorrow while listening to the Sanity Squad:

Remove turkey from the plastic bag and rinse the turkey. WRITE DOWN THE TURKEY’S WEIGHT so you know for how long you have to cook it tomorrow.
In a glass, mixed 2 tbs extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbs chopped garlic (the kind you buy in a jar), and 1 teas. salt. Lift the turkey’s skin and pour this mixture into it (between the skin and the flesh), and insert sprigs of rosemary (one large sprig on each side) under the skin. Rub the outside of the turkey with the remaining garlic oil, cover, and let it sit in the refrigerator until tomorrow.
If you like a lot of rosemary, you can add more while it marinades but remove them before roasting the turkey since the flavor can be overwhelming. Leave one in each side – it looks very nice when the turkey’s roasted.

The Anchoress has recipes for sausage stuffing and sweet potato pie. I can’t have the pie because of sugar intolerance, but tomorrow I’ll try to make pumpkin pie sweetened with pineapple (instead of sugar) and raisins soaked in bourbon.

I made sure there’s bourbon left in case the recipe doesn’t work out.

Update, Thursday 23 November Mmmmm, pupmkin pie . . .
(technorati tags turkey recipe Thanksgiving Food)

WARNING: Extremely upsetting content
Via Sigmund, Carl and Alfred, a very decent man:

Eteraz realized, I believe that some Western antipahy towards Islam is due to decency.

Indeed:

(h/t Pajamas Media)

SC&A says,

If freedom is indeed a gift from God, then it is a gift for all mankind, regradless of color, creed or culture.

But can Islam understand that?

Judith was Talking back to Rachel Corrie’s parents. The results were what one would expect.

Janet Reno Files Challenge To Terror Law Dan says,

I’ve heard the papers suggest a more humane alternative – that terrorists be incarcerated in old Texas farm houses until they can be surrounded by the FBI with the terrorists being burned alive on national television. But that last bit is unconfirmed, for now.

And then, there’s raiding their homes in the wee hours of the morning, taking them by force and sending them back to where they came from:

The Impressive Plans of the Democrats

Michael Medved: New Bishop show bankrupcy of ‘religious left’

The questions and answers with Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori eloquently (if inadvertently) demonstrate the bankruptcy of the Religious Left. If the movement’s attitudes toward marriage and child-bearing reflect the trendy ideas of secular environmentalists rather than timeless Biblical truth, then who needs religion? Most Americans understand that the purpose of organized faith is to bring unchanging values to bear in challenging and modifying the fads and temptations of the moment. Religion means nothing if we rather begin with fashionable contemporary ideas and use them to alter the fundamentals of faith. Moreover, what’s the point of maintaining any sort of organized Christianity if one of its most prominent leaders will instinctively condemn her own faith tradition while excusing or dismissing the violent excesses of the deadly Muslim enemies of the Christian world?

As with most leaders of the Christian Left, Bishop Jefferts Schori appears be very Left, but not very Christian. Her example shows the way that this new movement of religious liberals amounts to little more than a desperate effort to use the language of faith to repackage the tired ideas of secular, utopian leftism and moral relativism that have failed so spectacularly wherever they’ve been tried around the world.

Amazing how good economic news are starting to appear in the press: More Post-Election Good News: Wages Rising Faster Than Any Time Since 1997

Al-Jazeera Comes to America

Larwyn’s links
Fighting the information war

California Supreme Court: Web Publishers Not Liable for Republishing Defamatory Statements by Third Parties

Surprise, surprise: WashPost Slants Leftward in Covering Lives of Galbraith, Friedman

Most definitely not for the politically correct: Why the Future May Not Belong to Islam
Related: Spengler: the slow motion suicide of fundamentalist Islam

Wars are won by destroying the enemy’s will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women. The French sold their women to the German occupiers in 1940, and the Germans and Japanese sold their women to the Americans after World War II. The women of the former Soviet Union are still selling themselves in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of female Ukrainian “tourists” entered Germany after the then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer loosened visa standards in 1999. That helps explain why Ukraine has the world’s fastest rate of population decline. On a smaller scale, trafficking in Iranian women explains Iran’s predicament…the battered Iranian whore is the alter ego of the swaggering Iranian jihadi. . .

In the case of Iran, deracination and cultural despair impel millions of individual women to eschew motherhood. Prostitution is a form of psychic suicide; writ large, it is a manifestation of the national death-wish, the hideous recognition that the world no longer requires Ukrainians or Moldovans.

ShrinkWrapped’s Considering Iran

How Islamics Terrorists Stay in the USA
We said it looked like lawsuit shopping, which it was. Via Irwin, CAIR urges boycott of US Air – I’ll remember that the next time I’m flying.

Michael Totten, Chester and Wretchard look at the assasination of Lebanese Minister Pierre Gemayel.

The Failure of American Public Debate

Today’s video, from Maria:

Christmas shopping?

No matter how vile the insults, the Kennedy venality is endless:

Citizens Energy, Citgo Bring Discounted Oil To Bay State
Some Upset With Statement About President

BOSTON — Despite soaring profits for oil companies during the past year, only one company, Citgo of Venezuela, is willing to sell discounted oil to the poor.

That is, to the American poor that would qualify as middle class if they lived in Venezuela.

NewsCenter 5’s Amalia Barreda reported Monday that once again it is Joe Kennedy’s Citizens Energy group that is bringing that oil to needy families in Masschusetts.

Like his rum-running grandfather, Joe has no problem associating with criminals:

The oil comes from Citgo Petroleum of Venezuela — the country whose president, Hugo Chavez, called President George W. Bush the devil.

“No matter the differences we might have, there is always room for cooperation,” Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez said.

Not that Joe’s alone:

That was also the message Monday from Citgo’s CEO and from Rep. Bill Delahunt, who has developed a strong relationship with Chavez.

“We do need each other. The relationship is important, and we all have to try and we have to temp the rhetoric down,” Delahunt said.

Then there’s the oil going to NYC:

The program will deliver fuel to eligible families throughout the five boroughs. The initiative will also devote 5 percent of the delivery volume free of charge to homeless shelters during the heating season. The initial delivery was made to a 60-unit Bronx apartment building, whose low-income tenants will receive rent rebates as a result of the discount delivery of 200 gallons per unit.
. . .
The CITGO-Venezuela Heating Oil Program is also operating in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Greater Philadelphia, Greater Pittsburgh, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. CITGO is also providing discount oil directly to 163 Native American tribes in the states of Alaska, Maine, Minnesota and New York.

I’ve been posting about this for a year now